Summer Forever

13.

I woke up to my bedroom door slamming open.

I turned in my bed, squinting at the hallway light. A silhouette with choppily shaved head stood in the doorway. I frowned.

"River?"

"I'm leaving," he said.

"What?" I murmured, burying my head into my pillow. "I'm sleeping."

"I'm leaving, Isla. I'm sick of this shit. I'm going back to Sydney."

That woke me up.

I shot up, my hands rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. He didn't say anything more. Instead, he walked towards me, flopping limply onto the bed, his head hitting my lap over the blanket.

"What are you talking about?" I asked, my voice still groggy. "How did you get in here?"

"Your mum let me in."

"What?" I sputtered. My mum left for work early in the morning before the sun was even up. "What time is it?"

"Five," River replied. He turned his head, his voice muffling through the comforter. "I hate Shellside Bay."

"Don't say that," I said, returning my attention to him.

I'd worry about interrogating my mother later for letting a strange boy with a badly shaved head in mismatched clothes into our house unsupervised while I was sleeping. Knowing how much she loved River, though, it was unlikely to change anything.

I'd never seen River like this before. Sure, he moped and complained a lot, and he had a tendency to look on the negative side of things, but a River who hated Shellside Bay was unheard of.

Shellside Bay was his escape.

It was where he went to escape Sydney, to hide from his parents, to get away from school. I didn't know what life was like for River in Sydney before I moved in with him. He refused to talk about it, always shifting the topic to Shellside Bay.

If he was claiming to hate Shellside Bay now, something was very wrong.

"River," I said, my voice turning as stern as possible while still thick with sleep. "What's wrong? Did something happen?"

"No," he said, his words vibrating against the blanket. He rolled over to the other side of my mattress and glared at the ceiling. If I looked to closely, despite the darkness, I thought I could see redness rimming his eyes. "Nothing happened. That's exactly the problem."

I frowned. "I don't see how that's a problem."

"You don't see how it's a problem?" he echoed. He twisted onto his stomach to glare at me. "I drove all morning to Shellside Bay only for all of our friends to be busy the entire time and for Shellside Bay to be—be shit. I mean, we haven't even visited Isla yet!"

"I'm right here, River."

His glare turned sharper. "You know what I mean."

"Of course, I know what you mean. It's not like I've been having the time of my life here either. It's like, Everett's too busy for me, Austin's too busy, Connor's too busy. I just—" I sighed. "It's not what it used to be. Nothing is."

River sniffed. It was quiet, but the whole room was. The whole town was. So, I could hear him. And I could hear the shaky breath he released right after it.

Abruptly, he sat up, the entire mattress shaking with the movement.

"I'm leaving," he said again.

"You can't leave," I replied. "You're my ride home."